[MD] The Color of Perception

[david buchanan]

Dan, Carl and all MOQERS:

Carl said:
...Like Don's dog dish, the concept of "red", much like the concept of "dog dish" exists as a thought form, not as a reality.  Does it change when we experience it directly?  Our concept of it might.  We might see that the car is in fact of the shade we describe as "fire-engine red" rather than as "daker, more maroon."  Is that important?  I don't know.  We have to deal with each other directly, if we correspond, and meaning is important in that context.  i.e. is Don's dog dish round or square?  Is it's physical manifestation even relevant?



dmb says:

I'm not quite sure what the idea is here, but it reminds me of a quasi-famous thought experiment. It is designed to make a person think about the difference between concepts and empirical reality.

Let's say there is a physicist who knows everything there is to know about visible light, the whole color spectrum and electro-magnetic waves in general. Let's say she is a specialist. She has devoted her entire life to the study of "red", so that in addition to her work in physics she also learns everything she can about the meaning of "red" in history, literature and art too. She studies and reads and reads and studies for fifty years. The whole time, however, she has been living in a single room with no colors of any kind. She's never actually seen red. Her television and computer are black and white. No paintings. No plants. In her experience there has never ever been anything but black and white and shades of grey and yet, let's say, in terms of physics and other conceptual understandings she is the world's foremost experts on the color red. 

Now imagine that after 50 years she walks outside of her black and white world and she sees robins, roses, fire trucks in living color for the first time.

Now the question is, what is the difference between direct experience and abstract knowledge? What does that "expert" really know about red before leaving that sense-deprived world of books and abstractions? What she was missing was the "qualia" of red, the actual quality of phenomenal experience for which "red" is a general abstraction.

Not only are there a thousand shades of red, the feelings associated with "red" infinitely complex. Sirens and firetrucks, valentines candy and diaper rash, blood and hookers, anger and bulls. As The Clash pointed out, Castro is red, which is a color that will earn the spray of lead. This cultural symbols don't make any sense to a person who hasn't seen red. I mean, "red" is not just jiggling the retina in certain way. It's not just a subset of the whole electro-magnetic spectrum. For animals like us, "red" means heat, meat, sex, injury, fruit, daybreak and all sorts of intensely meaningful things. No wonder it catches the eye. The idea or the word "red" could never capture all that. Reality overflows with meaning. Abstractions and generalization simply for the sake of convenience but real red, the kind you know NOT from a book, just isn't the same.

Who was it that said, "there must always be a discrepancy between concepts and reality"? I think this question about "red" is one way to look at that discrepancy. It's classic stuff by now. I mean you can find this hypothetical expert of "red" discussed by the professionals and such. This question of "qualia" is a way to engage some of the cutting edge questions about consciousness and mind.